Online Home of Christopher Vitale, Associate Professor of Media Studies, The Graduate Program in Media Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY.

Amazing New Simondon Book!

So I just started Muriel Combes new book Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transvidual (MIT, 2012), from Brian Massumi and Erin Manning’s “Technologies of Lived Abstraction” series. And just a few pages in it’s easy to tell, this is the clear, thorough secondary source on Simondon that’s long been needed in English. Simondon is such a seminal thinker, and despite the increase in interest in his thought in the last decade or so, he is still truly underappreciated. Most of his work remains untranslated, and I must say, finally being able to read Simondon in French was one of the goals pushing myself to finally develop enough abilities in this area to do so. Luckily, it seems these volumes are being translated. But until that time, Combes’ text is the first full secondary source devoted to explaining this complex and rewarding thinker in English, and she does a great job of that. Clear, insightful, a must for anyone interested in contemporary theory.